I never had a family portrait.Maybe it’s just one of those things that
everyone else takes for granted; a staple that can be found on every mantle or
coffee table or living room wall from here to Seattle, yet in my home, on my
mantle…it’s not.I have family pictures,
of course, a few shots of my sisters, some shots of my mom, random pictures of
cousins and aunts and uncles and grandparents, but they are all separate.Fractured.Each confined to their own frame, their own set of ideals.

I guess I never really noticed it until now.

My best friend’s parents are getting divorced, and he’s beside himself with
grief.It’s odd, because he’s well-past
the emotional instability age, and yet I found him sitting on his bed, head in
his hands, sobbing his eyes out.

Strange when I stop to consider that his family—JC’s family,
of all fucking things—is the one I’d call the most normal.It’s sort of like the ideal American
stereotype…three kids, two boys and a girl, a mom who works in magazines and a
dad that works in computers, growing up together in a suburb of America’s
Capitol.Growing up with God and family
playing central roles in his young development, but with the freedom to dream
the impossible, whatever it might be.

JC’s family was fucking Disneyland…but
now…I don’t know what it is now.

Maybe I’ve come to believe in them more than my own family,
my own muddled way of being a latchkey kid.My mom worked her ass off trying to support us and with the brave front
she constantly wore I, in turn, learned to hide behind a tight-lipped smile and
a sweeping sense of humor.Affection was
scarce in my family…maybe, when others were around, we’d offer the hug and
occasional kiss, just to remind each other that we were alive, but it was
nothing like the bear-hugs JC would get from his mom, or the hair-ruffling
thing his dad would do that made C roll his eyes constantly.

I get wistful when I think about JC’s family, and my heart
hurts knowing what he’s going through now.

It’s funny; the first night I found out about the impending
divorce, we talked a lot about family…about love and loyalty and why
relationships go wrong.He seemed
certain that this was a passing phase; some sort of curable condition his
father had that would eventually clear up and they could go back to being
normal.

I didn’t have the heart to tell him that there is no
“normal,” not at all…but JC just looked at the rumpled family portrait in his
hands with a far-off gaze, and said nothing.

I think I’ve spent all my life searching for some sort of
family…for someone to trust…for someone who isn’t going to walk off or cop out
or disappear just when I’ve drummed up the courage to need them.

Don’t think I’m not grateful for what I have.I know, okay?I remember the nights spent wrapped in my own laundry, dreading the
moment when the sheets cooled down and the winter’s chill set in, and I would
be shivering, on the floor, pretending not to hear my mother’s tears.I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I
know exactly how lucky I am.

But…sometimes…I keep thinking that maybe life has dealt me a
foul hand.That maybe I should have been
able to grow up with a father’s influence. Maybe my deeply-ingrained skepticism of love would
have disappeared had my parents’ marriage not faltered.Perhaps I would have grown up to be a
stronger man had I had an example to emulate in front of me.

It’s in the past, though.My heart has healed, though the scars are still there.

JC…he’s just muddling through this as best he knows
how.Funny that he trusts people even
less than me, and the stubborn bastard won’t ever ask for help.Not ever.He just mopes and stares out the window and refuses to do anything
except listen to old records, first the Moody Blues and then CCR, anything to
remind him of home and old times and that strange sort of happiness he had
before this madness hit.

I keep telling him that he has a family with us, and any one
of us would do anything for him, but he just mumbles about things falling apart
and then shuffles off to some corner somewhere, not saying a word.

Those are the times I feel lucky, because I went through all
that crap early.Sure, the developmental
psychologist in me screams that having to endure the destruction of my nuclear
family at such a young age has had an untold influence on my fractured little
brain, but I learned to deal with it.I
didn’t have a stable family life long enough to get comfortable with it, and I
guess that, in turn, prepared me for the life I have now.

I remember some reporter somewhere asking JC what his
childhood was like, and C, being C, went off on some tangent about taking road
trips when he was younger and how that prepared him for the life of touring he
knows now.

Oh, C…you’re wrong.So very wrong.Because C is
wide-eyed and earnest and fundamentally honest, and a life of touring will
break people like that, and it hurts to watch it happen.

Maybe I should amend my earlier statement: C trusts less
than I do, but those he does trust, he trusts unconditionally, and when they
betray him, it destroys him unequivocally.I wouldn’t call his parents’ divorce a betrayal; it really has nothing
to do with JC…but he is taking it hard, and he’s withdrawn himself from
everyone who might try to help.And it’s
beginning to affect the rest of us.

We’ve all tried to draw him out, one by one.Joey drags him to expensive Italian
restaurants, luring him with the promise of excellent food and drink, and no
bill to speak of.Lance barks at him
about this schedule or that opportunity, forcing JC to focus even when he
doesn’t want to.Justin will take him
into the studio and make him play, or kidnap him and go for long drives with
the stereo blaring, almost oblivious to the vacant look on the older man’s
face.And me?I wait.Eventually, I know, he’ll come to me.

We’re the most unlikely of pairings, some say.C’s too rigid and I’m too loose, or we’re
both too right for our own good, or whatever other excuse people like to
offer…but…we understand each other.And
C’s now part of a special bond that Justin and I share: C can no longer pretend
to be from the perfect family.

Justin and I don’t talk a whole lot about family life, but
when someone starts babbling about how their parents are pissing them off or
how they caught their mom and dad screwing, any sort of “regular family”
activity, we share a knowing look.We
don’t have the luxury of being pissed at our happy, perfect parents.

Justin’s case is a little different then mine; after all,
both of his parents are remarried, but he’s still in the “club.”He’s still the child of a broken family.And now…C joins us.

I’ve been sitting outside his house for twenty minutes,
watching the light on the alarm system blink against the inky backdrop of
night, watching his shadow dance back and forth as he paces a groove into the
carpet.Waiting.Wondering.Thinking.

I know, without a doubt, what he’s doing.He’s walking back and forth, wineglass in hand,
conducting a trial with a brutally biased jury in the courtroom of his muddled
head.Examining evidence.Cross-examining witnesses.Delivering a guilty verdict, with a
life-sentence of loneliness, for a crime he didn’t commit.JC plays the role of the guilty lover to its
tragically glorious hilt.

He’s thinking, I’m sure, of the nights his girlfriend spent
alone while he writhed next to some blonde on an over-packed dance floor.He’s remembering the lies he told, the hearts
he broke, the times he refused to listen and then traded talking for yelling,
tossing logic out the window in a fit of rage.He’s seeing the tears of his lover as he walked out the door in a fit of
rage, hearing the sound of her soft sobs as she lay alone at night, while he
lay hunched on the bus, caught in reckless dreams.

He’s hearing his own voice, detached, resolute, telling her
that she will always be second to his four best friends, and if that’s not good
enough then perhaps she doesn’t love him.

He’s tasting regret on his tongue, heavy and bitter, and
wondering how many of his failures he can blame on his parents.

I see him come to the window, his disheveled hair sticking
out in a dozen directions, moonlight teasing his torso as he gazes into the
waters of the pool like they’re a crystal ball.He’s thinking.He’s
remembering.And he’s hurting, I’m sure
of it.

His mouth moves to form words that I can’t quite decipher,
and it’s when he brings his fingers to his eyes, angrily batting away tears,
that I am spurred to action.Quickly I
exit my car, hastily punching in the series of numbers on his alarm panel
before opening the heavy door and entering his house.

It is pitch black inside and I stumble against furniture,
tripping over piles of dirty clothes and crunching my feet into old pizza
boxes.The stale smell of old air is
heavy in the house, and I cringe inwardly, knowing that this is not like JC,
not at all.He’s obsessed with
appearances while simultaneously proclaiming his hatred of the superficial, and
like many things the contradiction suits him.But this…this haphazard way of living, the remnants of garbage and other
bits of life’s detritus marring what should be the epitome of perfection…this
is not JC.My worry intensifies.

I take the steps two at a time, thanking the lord above and Lance
Bass for installing the night-light at the foot of the stairs.I have no desire to go stumbling into the
balcony and tumbling onto the floor below, especially with JC in the state he’s
in.

I take a deep breath to steady my nerves before knocking
lightly on the door to his bedroom.I
neither expect nor receive a response, and cautiously I enter the darkened
room, wishing my eyes were sharper than they are, because I can’t see a damn
thing.

I listen intently for any sign of life, and a second later a
bare whisper greets my ears.

“Hello, Chris.”

His back is to me, the long lean lines of his spine barely
visible from beneath a shadow’s kiss, and when I squint more forcefully I can
make out his hands fisted beside him, his entire posture screaming tension and
stress.

The air is heavy with some sort of misguided anticipation,
like the moment you watch a star fall from the sky, wondering when and where it
will hit.

“Get you a drink?” He offers, and I can’t suppress a chuckle.Always C.Always polite.Always
gracious.Something else, I’m sure, he’s
learned from his parents.

“No, C,” I whisper quietly.“I don’t need anything.”

“Then why are you here?” He asks, and I am taken aback.JC’s the type of person who will allow you to
stay in his house all day so long as you stay out of his way and maybe cover
him with a blanket while he’s napping.If you do that, he might even make you dinner, although his efforts will
be largely inedible.But the point is,
JC’s not one for questioning people when they come to call nor kicking them out
once they’ve arrived.

“I came to see you,” I say earnestly.“I’m worried about you, C.”

“You’re worried about me,” He echoes.“How nice.Everyone is always so fucking WORRIED about me.Like I’m a goddamned ticking time bomb.Like I’m some kind of pariah.So NICE of everyone to be worried about me,”
He spits, coiled and hissing, an agitated serpent.I am worried and bewildered and frightened
all at once.

“Why would you be WORRIED about me, Chris,” He asks
heatedly, whirling around to face me with undiluted emotion in his eyes.“Am I so monumentally fucked up that I can’t
be trusted to take care of myself?Is that
it?!”

“N..no, C,” I say nervously.He’s reduced me to stammering, and it nearly knocks me off of my
feet.I pride myself on being able to
read people, to judge the intents and motivations hidden below the layers of
congeniality most people wear like masks.Looking at him now, an eerie tinge in his vapid blue eyes, I can’t tell
night from day, nor do I have any idea what he’s thinking.

“She thought I was fucked up.Did she tell you that?Did she tell you that before she fucking LEFT
ME, Chris?” He snarls, and I recoil, just a tiny bit.JC’s ex-girlfriend was a sore spot between
us, a thorn in an infinitely tangled briar patch of lust and mixed
emotions.When it got to be too much for
her, she came to me, and I comforted her as best I could while keeping it
hidden from JC for fear of hurting him, but as with most dirty secrets, the
truth eventually came out.He accused me
of sleeping with her, which I denied, and then he accused me of being in love
with her, for which I had no response.I
loved her, of course I did, but it was, as they say in cheesy romance novels, a
“different kind of love.”It was love
borne of shared backgrounds and experiences, not love borne of passionate
desire.Eventually, JC said he
understood, but I was never sure.

“I’m sure she didn’t think you were fucked up, C, I mean,
she was hurting, but…”

“’How can you claim to love someone by hurting them,
JC?!It’s fucked up!You’re fucked up!’”He spat her words verbatim at me and a surge
of pity washed over me in waves.Joshua
Chasez will never be accused of holding his cards for the world to see.He plays his hand too close to his chest…and
time and again, it costs him.

“I loved her, Chris.Did you know that?I fucking
loved her,” He whispered, voice wavering, hands trembling with barely
restrained emotion.“But what does love
get you, anyway, huh?Pain.Suffering.Maybe a few years of fleeting happiness before it crashes down in a
FUCKING divorce…”

His voice breaks on the last words and a moment later he is
on the floor, head in his hands, sobbing convulsively.

I am frozen in place, terrified to move but loathe to stand
there, watching one of the strongest people I know reduced to a quivering pile
of tears.In all the years I’ve known
him, I’ve seen JC cry like this twice.On the night we realized that the lawsuit wasn’t a joke, and we might in
fact lose everything we’d poured our souls into, I watched JC cry brokenly for
hours, curled in a tiny ball, inconsolable…and a few weeks ago, when he found
out his parents were going to divorce, he did the same thing.

I know he’s cried since then, but he never lets us see
it.He’ll show up with red, weary eyes
and a nose stuffed from hours of sniffling, but he’ll allow no tears to escape
onto those porcelain cheeks.On stage,
during shows, he may be overcome by emotion and allow the music to break down
the barriers into his heart, but he chalks that up to showmanship and “the
moment,” and refuses to discuss it with anyone.

My rambling reflections are halted abruptly by a shaky sob
that sounds like my name, but it is so riddled with agony I can barely
tell.In an instant I am on the floor,
my arms filled with trembling, sobbing JC, and I pull him close and hold him
for all I am worth.

“Chris…Chris…Chris…” Over and over he says my name, each
time softer and softer until it fades, a thunderstorm melting into a warm rain
shower, and at last he calms.

Gingerly I pull him to face me, but he will not meet my
eyes.

“C…” I say gently, but he interrupts me with a soft, “don’t,
Chris,” and I allow us to slip into silence once again.

“You should get into bed,” I say quietly, and wearily he
nods, mumbling his thanks and brushing off my attempts to assist him in the
task.It’s a habit ingrained from my
childhood: I help those that hurt, even if they don’t want it, and in turn, I
feel better.It’s a selfish form of
altruism, I suppose, but as I said before, nothing comes without a price.

When JC is finally tucked into bed, covers pulled to his
neck and breathing slow and even, I allow myself the barest indulgence of
watching him sleep, if only for a moment.It is in repose that his features are the most relaxed, that the
innocence robbed from years of mistrust returns fleetingly, and the lines of
worry that pull on his face disappear.

“Good night, C,” I whisper softly, and a drowsy murmur is my
response.

Closing the door behind me, I wander down the hall into the
waiting guest room, heart weary with the strains of a friend.It is a burden that I bear willingly, because
so many others, in turn, have carried my weight, and for that I am immeasurably
grateful.

Removing my clothing and slipping into an old pair of shorts
from the drawer JC keeps in each room for each of the four of us, I look with
interest upon the mantle, where pictures catch the moonlight’s glow as it
slithers in through the blinds.

I pick up a frame from its resting place, delicately tracing
the faces trapped in time, reflecting on the image that stares back at me with
eternal youth.

JC.Justin.Lance.Joey.Me.

My family portrait.I
swallow hard, blinking back tears that form without warning, realizing that I
had been wrong all this time.That maybe
what I had wanted all along was in fact right in front of me.